Aww... It’s a cute baby dragon. Its eyes glow brightly at night, and it enjoys attacking insects and small animals.

And look! It has grown wings! It must be close to maturing.

Young dragons are relatively defenseless. They are born with relatively soft scales, which are shed and replaced with harder ones as the hatchling matures. Once a hatchling’s wings grow in, it typically marks the beginning of maturation. At this point they are often capable of hunting on their own and are usually left alone by their mother.

Zalline, one of the oldest hatchlings in her cave, is unusually good at starting trouble. Her and her two bodyguards (Zornin and Zorthin) have single handedly persuaded the other regular black hatchlings (there are 49 of them) to participate in no less than five 'riots'—where they all went up to the pebble dragons and began hopping all over them—and 27 attempts at starting a war with the other resident hatchlings (mainly mints). The latter of these has been consistently foiled by the pebbles, which aside being the only other force of that magnitude in the cave, feel it is the best way to get revenge. None of this is going to make her any less inclined towards making trouble, but it certainly keeps things interesting.